I noticed something interesting in writing my story for today which led me to do some research.  The word air-conditioned is counted as two words in my word document even though I would count it as one, so I looked it up and yes, most of the answers and grammar sites I looked at counted a hyphenated compound word as one.

So, why does the electronic word count function count it as two, I asked myself?

I found out it had to do with coding in computing.  Most text systems consider a hyphen to be a word boundary instead of a character so the compound word created with a hyphen is counted as two words.

Since, grammatically (air-conditioned) is one word, I posted today's story without removing the extra word the electronic word counting says the story has.  :)

I suppose there are earlier stories I treated differently, before I discovered this discrepancy, but then the method of word count in manuscripts is a whole other discussion and I will leave that for another day.

Suffice it to say, I will stick with using the electronic word count unless the story contains a hyphenated word and yes, I am kind of nerdy when it comes to accuracy.

Have a great day, wherever you are!